


Blasphemy

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Sirius Black Being an Idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 13:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: During Saturday’s Quidditch match against Ravenclaw, three things happen in rapid succession: Sirius almost gets killed by a Bludger, Marlene McKinnon pulls off a spectacular Hairpin Turn and saves his life, and Sirius realizes that okay, holy shit, he’s actually in love with her.





	Blasphemy

**Author's Note:**

> I am a staunch supporter of Gay Sirius, so writing this was a truly weird experience (I made a bargain with a friend, long story), but I’m fairly happy with how it turned out so I wanted to share it anyway :)

During Saturday’s Quidditch match against Ravenclaw, three things happen in rapid succession: Sirius almost gets killed by a Bludger, Marlene McKinnon pulls off a spectacular Hairpin Turn and saves his life, and Sirius realizes that okay, holy shit, he’s actually in love with her.

It’s rather embarrassing, honestly, for a Beater to almost get killed by a Bludger - he’s supposed to chase after them, not get chased by them - but he’d been distracted, keeping a close eye on James, who the Ravenclaw Beaters had been targeting relentlessly since the start of the match, and he hadn’t even noticed the Bludger headed straight for his head. He’s lucky that Marlene is such an excellent flier, because she’d been all the way over on the other end of the pitch - Sirius barely understands how she made it over to him in time. But anyway, she had done a Hairpin Turn, hightailed it to his end of the pitch and knocked the Bludger away from his head just in time, and his stomach had swooped in an entirely ridiculous way that couldn’t have been more obviously feelings-related.

Now, it would be very easy to chalk this up to a combination of adrenaline (from the whole almost-dying thing), awe (at Marlene’s pro-level play) and even, possibly, gratitude (since she’d saved his life, probably, or at the very least saved him a stint in the hospital wing) - and in fact, that’s what Sirius tries to do as they close out the match, narrowly beating Ravenclaw. He tries to brush it off as they land on the pitch, and then Marlene flings herself at him in celebration, almost sending him toppling to the ground. “You’re welcome, by the way,” she teases, flashing him one of her trademark mischievous smiles, and Sirius thinks  _ shit shit shit shit _ .

When he wakes up the next morning and his first thoughts are of Marlene, that’s when he realizes he’s really screwed.

Now, being in love with Marlene McKinnon is, in theory, not much of a problem, especially given that they are, technically, casually dating. She’s smart, she’s funny, she doesn’t take shit from anybody - including him - and, if he’s being honest, it doesn’t hurt that she has really nice tits. Like,  _ really _ nice tits. No, in theory, Marlene McKinnon is a wonderful person to fall in love with. The problem isn’t with her at all - it’s with Sirius.

Sirius is not… exactly…  _ known _ for being good at relationships. He’s known for being quite good at, well, other things - just with too many different girls for him to really be considered great boyfriend material. Which is fine with him, because he’s self-aware enough to know that it takes a lot of energy and patience to put up with him; honestly, he doesn’t understand how his friends do it, and he hardly wants to add another person to the list of People Who Have to Deal With His Bullshit.

What he and Marlene have going on right now is… it’s good. Sometimes they go to Hogsmeade together, and sometimes they snog, and sometimes - well, it doesn’t matter, the point is that they have fun together, and there are no expectations, and Sirius doesn’t want to complicate it with something as messy as  _ love. _

Except that, apparently, he gets no say in the matter.

For three days he tries his best to crush his feelings into a little ball inside his chest that he can just ignore forever, and for three days he puts up with the way his insides decide to turn into a pile of mush every time Marlene so much as looks at him. By the end of day three, though, it’s clear that he’s fighting a losing battle. Marlene even comes onto him just after dinner, and he has to turn her down because he’s pretty sure he can’t be alone with her right now without severe risk of cardiac arrest and/or sudden and involuntary declarations of love. Then she looks disappointed when he says no, and seeing her look even the slightest bit unhappy makes him kind of miserable, and he ends up leaving quite abruptly to go back to his dorm room.

It’s a sorry state of affairs.

He flings himself onto his back on his bed and lies there sulking until the other Marauders venture upstairs from the common room, at which point he sits up and fixes them all with a look of desperation.

“I think I’m genuinely gone for Marlene,” he says, his panic evident in his voice.

“Sorry?” says James, making a big show of cleaning out his ears. “What was that? I must have misheard you, I thought you said you’re genuinely gone for Marlene -“

“Don’t be a prick, James,” Sirius snaps in response. “What am I supposed to do?!”

“I dunno, maybe ask her to go out with you properly?”

Next to James, Remus is plainly trying very hard not to laugh. Sirius glares at both of them. This is not a laughing matter! This is a very serious situation and he needs their help to get out of it as painlessly as possible. The best thing to do would probably be to cut things off with Marlene completely, but he knows that could hurt her feelings and if anyone’s going to get hurt because of this ridiculous “love” nonsense he would much rather it be him.

“Stop laughing,” he snaps at Remus, even though Remus isn’t technically laughing. “This isn’t funny!”

Remus completely fails in his attempt to rearrange his face into a more serious expression. “It’s just that, what with the way you were applying yourself when I walked in on you eating her out last month, I figured you already knew you were gone for her-”

Sirius, with a cry of outrage, flings a pillow at Remus’s head, which Remus dodges easily and which smacks directly into Peter instead. Peter exclaims in protest, but Sirius ignores him and flops onto his back again, pouting furiously up at his canopy.

“What am I supposed to do?” he whines. “I can’t ask her out properly, I’d be the worst boyfriend in the fucking world! Can you even imagine?!”

“Padfoot, slow down,” says James, settling down onto the mattress next to him. “Where is this even coming from? I mean, you’ve been messing around with Marlene for ages, what’s brought this on all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know! She saved me from that Bludger and I had a - one of those - what does Moony call them? A lightball moment?”

“Lightbulb moment,” Peter supplies. “And it could just be, I dunno, a side effect or something? Of her saving your life, I mean.”

“I thought it might just be the adrenaline, but it’s been three days and I’m still having…  _ feelings _ .” He rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in his comforter. “Merlin, this is the  _ worst _ . Prongs, how do you deal with this all the time?!”

“Oi! We’re not talking about me and Lily right now,” says James. (Sirius can practically hear him blushing.) “We’re talking about you and Marlene. Don’t try to change the subject.”

“What else is there to say? I’m completely fucked. I’m going to have to transfer to Beauxbatons or something. I’ll need to start brushing up on my French.”

“I think you’re being a tad overdramatic,” says Remus.

“ _ Ferme ta bouche, _ Lupin.”

“Just leave it a few more days,” Peter suggests. “Maybe it’ll just go away on its own. Maybe it really is just… leftover adrenaline, or something.”

“Or,” says Remus, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “you could recognize that Marlene is also a human being with emotions and have a mature conversation with her about this?”

Ugh, fuck. Remus has always been  _ so good _ at making Sirius realize he’s being an asshole. Honestly, he has it down to an art.

“Alright, alright,” he sighs. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Good man,” James says approvingly, giving him a comforting pat on his calf. “You’ve got this.”

Sirius very much does not feel like he’s got this, but he doesn’t say so. He just groans half-heartedly against his mattress and lets the others go about their business.

*

So, he fully intends to follow Remus’s advice. He really, truly does. He just… decides to follow Peter’s advice first, just in case. There’s no point in handing Marlene his heart to stomp all over if it’s only going to turn out that this has all been a near-death-experience false alarm. And - this is the worse scenario - it would be very bad if Marlene returns his feelings and then he realizes it was all a big mistake. No, it’s best for him to wait just a couple more days.

Except that ‘a couple more days’ turns into a week, which turns into two weeks, which slips into three weeks, and he still hasn’t talked to Marlene. And he’s still pretty sure he’s legitimately in love with her.

Everything is terrible.

But really though, he’s going to talk to her. Especially since Marlene has  _ definitely  _ noticed that something’s up. She’d given up on trying to talk to him after the third time he’d rebuffed her, and now she just keeps giving him odd looks from across the room.

He’s pretty angry at himself, to be honest, because he knows he’s probably really hurt her feelings at this point. He’s starting to think that he’s probably put her off him entirely even if she did at some point feel the same. She might not even want to casually date anymore, after this fiasco, and the part of him that thinks that might be for the best - since Marlene can do much, much better than him - is being increasingly drowned out by the much larger part of him that misses her and can’t stand them being like this.

On Friday morning he decides that this whole thing has gone on entirely too long, and he resolves to talk to Marlene that evening. There’s even a Hogsmeade weekend coming up - maybe if their talk somehow, miraculously goes well, he’ll ask her to go with him properly - like, as a couple.

He’s going to be honest with her, though - have a mature conversation, like Remus said. He’ll tell her all the reasons that he would be a complete disaster of a boyfriend, all the reason me that she deserves someone better. She’s the one who gets to choose whether she wants to put up with him or not - and if she decides she can’t be bothered, he’ll understand.

He spends the whole day trying to decide what to say to her, and when dinnertime rolls around, he decides to skip the meal and go upstairs to collect himself. Except he never makes it to the dorm, because when he gets to the Fat Lady, Marlene is standing there.

_ Shit. _

She looks distinctly cross, her arms crossed over her chest and one eyebrow raised as she stares him down, and he swallows so hard he’s sure she hears it. For a long, long moment they just stare at each other in tense silence, which she eventually breaks with an impatient, “Well?”

“Well what?” Sirius says on instinct, and then wants to smack himself.

“Don’t give me that. What the fuck, Sirius? You’ve been ignoring me for weeks!”

Sirius opens his mouth to answer, but everything that he’d thought of to say has completely abandoned him. It doesn’t help that Marlene is standing right there, glaring at him expectantly. He tries desperately to think of something, anything to say to make her relax a little bit, but before he can, there’s a delicate cough behind them.

“Excuse me,” says the Fat Lady primly, “but if you two are going to have an argument, would you quite mind doing it inside?”

“Fine, okay,” Marlene says, “Taradiddle, then.”

The portrait swings forward, and Marlene eyes him pointedly. “After you,” she says.

Well, that’s fair enough, he supposes.

He steps past her into the empty Common Room, and turns to face her as the portrait swings shut behind her. “Marlene,” he starts to say, planning to follow it up with “I can explain” - but before he can even finish getting her name out, she rounds on him.

“Listen,” she says. “I don’t know what the fuck’s been going on with you this month. I don’t need to know, if you don’t want to tell me. But - I know you don’t do relationships and I’m not your girlfriend or whatever, but I thought I was at least your friend, and this thing you’re doing where you pretend I don’t exist is fucking bullshit. If you’re not interested in me, or - or however you want to put it, just tell me so I can deal with it and move on, instead of trying to string me along like an asshole.”

_ Shit shit shit shit _ .

“No, it’s not - you’ve got it all wrong,” he says urgently. “It’s just-”

“Wait,” she interrupts, “hold on. Is this about the fucking Quidditch match? You’ve been acting weird ever since then. Are you embarrassed about the Bludger or something? Because honestly, Sirius, I know you have a bit of an ego, but that’s just-”

“I’m in love with you,” Sirius blurts out.

As soon as he realizes what he’s said, he barely resists the urge to clap a hand over his mouth. Instead, he just takes a deep breath and tries to stay calm as he watches a variety of emotions pass across Marlene’s face, before he lands on what he would probably call ‘sceptical’.

“So you’ve been ignoring me for weeks because you’re in love with me? Isn’t ignoring someone the opposite of what you do when you’re in love with them?”

“I - well, I mean, yeah, but - I didn’t  _ want _ to ignore you. I was just trying to sort out how I felt and everything, and it took a bit longer than expected. I was planning to talk to you tonight, that’s why I skipped dinner and came up here.”

She narrows her eyes at him, and he squirms a little under her gaze. This is already so much harder than he’d been expecting, and he’d been expecting it to be  _ really _ hard. “And what were you planning to say?”

“Erm… honestly? I was going to say that - I mean, I know we’ve been sort of going out, but I think you’re absolutely brilliant and I’d really like it if we could - you know, date. Properly.”

“That took you almost a month to sort out?” Marlene asks, but he can see that she’s fighting back a smile.

“No!” he says defensively. “It’s just - I was trying to decide whether to ask you or not, because I - I’ve never  _ dated _ anyone before, okay? And I’m pretty sure I’ll be fucking terrible at it, and I just didn’t know whether it was fair to ask you to put up with it.”

Marlene huffs a little, but she definitely looks less cross now. She walks close to him, and he restrains himself from reaching out and putting his hands on her waist, just in case she’s still too annoyed with him for that sort of thing.

“For someone so smart, you really can be an idiot, Black,” she says.

“Oi,” he protests half-heartedly, unable to muster up much indignation since, well, he has been a pretty big idiot this month.

“I  _ like _ ‘putting up with’ you. That’s why I’ve been going out with you for months. It’s because I like you rather a lot, not because I just don’t know any better.”

“But I’m -”

“A bit high-maintenance? Yeah, I know,” she laughs. “I’m pretty sure everyone at Hogwarts knows. I can handle it.”

She steps even closer and slides her hands up his chest, and her touch sends prickles of electricity racing up his spine. It takes him a moment to collect himself enough to ask, “So… does that mean you’ll… y’know…” He pauses, makes himself meet her eyes. She looks like she’s holding back laughter.

“Be your girlfriend?” she prompts, smirking.

“Well… yeah.”

Instead of answering, she just leans up and kisses him, and Sirius pretty much short-circuits. Luckily, his body goes on autopilot, and he wraps his arms around her waist and draws her in closer.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” he manages when they break apart.

Marlene rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning at him, all traces of her previous irritation gone from her face. “I thought it was fairly self-explanatory.”

They stand there smiling goofily at one another, until Sirius’s stomach growls and he realizes that, now that everything’s sorted, he actually has no reason to skip dinner. It hasn’t been that long - they should still be able to make it before dessert - so he reaches down and takes Marlene’s hand.

“D’you want to go down to the Great Hall?” he asks her.

She hums pensively, but a mischievous look has come over her face. “We could…” she says in a low voice; but then she slips his hand under her skirt, sliding it slowly up between her thighs until his fingers are brushing against her knickers. It’s obvious as soon as he touches her that she’s already very wet. “Or… we could go take advantage of your empty room?”

Suddenly, Sirius is desperately hard and not at all hungry.

“I like the way you think, McKinnon,” he says, his voice a little strangled. 

“Good,” she replies, dropping his hand and leading him towards the staircase, “because it’s been almost a month, I’m seriously deprived.”

“I think I can make it up to you.”

“I’m sure you can.” She flashes him a dazzling smile over her shoulder. “I have every faith in you.”

Despite his… distraction, he hears the second meaning in her words, and it makes his heart swell in his chest. He is  _ not _ , he vows right then, going to let himself fuck this up. The two of them can make this work, he’s sure of it. If he can be a good boyfriend to anyone, it’s definitely Marlene.


End file.
